God’s Mighty Little Missionary
The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Mother Maria Stieren
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Author Edward Pentin is donating 100% of his royalties to Mother Maria’s congregation.
What does trusting in God with everything look like? Mother Maria Stieren lived the answer – through the Cross.
She walked into an abandoned church in the Tanzanian desert with just pocket change, a breviary, and an unshakeable conviction that God had sent her. She was right.
Born in Munich in 1923 as Lydia Eva Christina, she grew up under Nazism, entered religious life after the war, and spent decades in teaching, health care, and contemplative prayer. Then came a deeper call: to serve the poorest of the poor and meet Christ precisely where He suffers: in the Eucharist and in His people.
What followed was not success in any ordinary sense but fruit born of the Cross.
From that hidden beginning emerged a global mission: religious houses, parishes, hospitals, orphanages, schools, and farms across Africa, Latin America, and Europe, all flowing from a woman barely five feet tall, guided by a single question: Where does Jesus suffer the most?
Her answer led her again and again into sacrifice, obscurity, illness, and opposition. Yet it was there – at the foot of the Cross – that her work took root, grew, and flourished.
In these pages, you will encounter a woman of heroic virtue whose inspiring life was characterized by:
- Courage, for stepping into the unknown again and again in the face of hardship, illness, and persecution
- Fidelity, which attracted thousands to the Faith and the sacraments
- Love, poured out in service to the forgotten and unwanted
- Reverence, rooted in Eucharistic Adoration and deep union with the crucified Christ
- And a living witness to the Faith that continues in the congregation she founded
Clergy, religious, and laity who knew her called her a saint. The life she lived – marked by surrender, prayer, and a reckless trust in God’s providence – is more than a remarkable story to admire. It is an invitation to follow suit.
This is what it looks like when a soul says yes.
Endorsements
“I am profoundly grateful to Edward Pentin for making Mother Stieren more widely known through this biography. May she inspire us to fidelity and perseverance, to greater reverence for the Blessed Eucharist and to greater missionary zeal in preaching the saving Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ!”
Robert Cardinal Sarah
Prefect Emeritus, Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments
“In God’s Mighty Little Missionary, Edward Pentin has given us a deeply moving account of a life rooted in unwavering faith, Eucharistic devotion, missionary zeal, and complete abandonment to Divine Providence. Mother Maria Stieren’s remarkable missionary work continues to bear extraordinary fruit in Africa and stands as an enduring witness to the transformative power of a life wholly dedicated to Christ. Being an African Catholic, I found Mother Maria’s witness especially inspiring, and her love for Africa particularly heartening. I wholeheartedly recommend this compelling, beautifully written, and profoundly Catholic biography.”
Obianuju Ekeocha
President and Founder, Culture of Life Africa
"God’s Mighty Little Missionary shows just how much Mother Maria Stieren is a gift and a blessing from God to us, a committed and spiritual mother with great missionary zeal and dedication to witnessing and preaching the Gospel of the Lord. This book also shows us that although she was European in color, she was African in her heart, mind, and way of life. She loved God and His people. I remember her as a woman of prayer, with profound faith, charity and hope, all rooted in love and adoration of the Blessed Eucharist, the source and summit of our Christian life."
Edward E. Mapunda
The Bishop of Singida, Tanzania
Details
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| SKU | 7414 |
